I was overwhelmed by how honest and authentic the writers were, how they bared their souls for the whole world. Some very personal and painful experiences shared.

So sad that such brilliant, poignant, articulate writing has to come out of the suffering that is cancer. Compared to a lot of the bloggers, my experiences have been less painful and grim – it really puts life into perspective. I am grateful for their efforts, and awed by their talent – thank you to all those who blog about cancer.

Still stunned from the first day’s revelation that the cancer may have metastasised I was told I had to have a Pet scan the next day. You can imagine the state I was in that evening.

German efficiency took over. The next morning, I was woken up at 6.30am, and half-asleep and clutching a packed lunch that was prepared by Tanya of the clinic’s kitchen, was whisked away in a very swish Mercedes taxi to the Paracelsus Hospital in Ruit. The taxi driver, Patrice, spoke very good English and apparently was going to see me through all the preparations for the Pet scan which was a relief as I didn’t even know what the German for Pet scan was.

Because of my glowing recommendation, S. and her mother went to Hallwang.

S. had Stage 4 colo-rectal cancer. The doctors in the UK had said the tumour was inoperable and wanted to give her six months’ worth of systemic chemotherapy to shrink the tumour. Even then there was no guarantee that the tumour would shrink sufficiently.

Updated 27 May 2014: Now Chaga, not Reishi: For some reason, Reishi didn’t work for my hayfever this year. Maybe I should have increased the dose, I don’t know. I decided to stop taking Reishi after I read that it had estrogenic properties and people with estrogen-positive breast cancer should not take Reishi. I was disappointed because it had worked so well last year. Quite by chance, I was taking another mushroom, Chaga, from Oriveda. I had to up the dose because I caught a cold. I was taking 9 capsules, 3 times a day. Result: still had cold. But no hayfever. I’ll keep you posted whether it’s a real “cure” or not. You can buy the same very high-potency Chaga extract from Oriveda.nl.

Updated 20 March 2014 – unfortunately, the Reishi hasn’t worked so far this year. I started taking it at the first signs of the Spring hayfever season, and I’m still getting hayfever. I’m going to ramp up the dose and see what happens. It could be that last year I was having acupuncture weekly, then every fortnightly. And also taking TCM herbs. It was also after the mastectomy so perhaps less tumour burden meant the body wasn’t in such an inflammatory state and the Th1/Th2 balance was … in balance. Stay tuned.

This week, for the first time in 20 years, I slept with the windows wide open, in the middle of a blazing hot summer.

(So what’s so unusual about that?)

Well, in previous years, sleeping with the windows open would have meant breathing in lungfuls of pollen-laden air, triggered by traffic fumes, and suffering from hayfever.

I landed at Stuttgart airport at mid-day. A taxi from the clinic was waiting for me in arrivals. The driver held up a sign with my name on it. On the reverse of the sign was the clinic’s name. I was so relieved he didn’t display that because I didn’t want to shout out the reason for my visit to everyone.

It was a 1.5 hour journey to the clinic from Stuttgart and the final leg was uphill, and through beautiful snow-covered forests. Everything looked like a picture postcard. The temperature outside was about minus 15 Centigrade.

Canadian researchers have discovered that there is a relationship between infection and cancer spreading.

When the body experiences an infection (for e.g. pneumonia after surgery), white blood cells are produced by the body to fight this infection. This results in inflammation. The white blood cells have a web-like net that captures bacteria. However, this web has been shown to capture circulating tumour cells, and a protein in this web activates cancer cells.

“Over and over again, surgeons the world over were noticing that cancer recurred sooner if patients developed infectious complications such as pneumonia after surgery. “We were seeing this with many different cancers — head and neck cancer, colon cancer, stomach cancer, esophagus and lung cancer …”

It all happened very quickly. My chat with Grace to arrival at Hallwang took less than a month. There was another reason for my speed – Grace was running a group to Hallwang and I wanted to be there when she was.

Update 5 February, 2015: please note that I have been receiving reports from patients that Hallwang Clinic’s services are not meeting expectations and Grace Gawler no longer runs Medi-Tours to Hallwang. Therefore, before you go to Hallwang, please get it in writing that the oncologist and Prof Vogl will be there throughout your stay.

Hallwang offered a personalised system of treatment based on the type of cancer, and the individual, using lab tests. Also, it had a policy of outsourcing to experts the treatments that they could not provide themselves.

Updated March 2016 – For more information on GcMAF, please join the GcMAF and GcMAF Cancer forums on Facebook – they are closed groups, so you have to wait for your membership to be confirmed. They contain up-to-date information on sources of GcMAF, and also feedback and contributions by people who are using GcMAF.

Updated 22 Feb 2014: please note that the process for culturing Maf314 is different from Bravo Probiotic. I suggest that if you want to do it properly, that you buy a fresh set of cultures from Bravo as only they can guarantee the activity of the cultures. Compound 1 must be cultured afresh from powder each time. Compound 2 can be re-propagated from the existing culture.

When I was trying to find another weapon to beat the cancer, I used GcMAF for about three months.

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